


Our Corner of the Cosmos

by w_anderingheart



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M, Reincarnation, Romance, baekhyun being sassy (whats new), lots of pining!yeol lol, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 04:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7831222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/w_anderingheart/pseuds/w_anderingheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere between a jazz club and a space ship, between this life and the next, Chanyeol falls in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Corner of the Cosmos

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for the baeconandeggs exchange! (Posted [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6800632) at the BAE ao3 account.) Original post date: 2016/05/10.
> 
> As stated in my original author's note, a section of this story can be read as Gatsby!AU. Thanks everyone for the support this fic has gotten, it was an absolute pleasure to write. x

1962

A few things happen in that moment.

The club owner’s son, Jongin, ends his saxophone performance with a rising flourish. A collective breath is exhaled from the busy Friday night crowd as the song climbs to its ending. An applause begins. Chanyeol looks up from where he is polishing whiskey glasses with a stained dish rag. It could be the music that pulls his gaze up. It could be that. But if he were to try and remember this moment, as he often would in the years that would follow and across the lifetimes he could not presently comprehend, the truth is Chanyeol could never be sure.

In short, a few things happen. The saxophone reaches its end. Chanyeol looks up when the applause begins. His eyes meet another pair of eyes across the club; small eyes, sharp eyes—sharp in contrast to the rest of the man’s soft face. Eyes that cut right through the bustling patrons, pierce the noise like a spear, twinkle like stars above a rooftop, brimming with quiet charm. And usually, Chanyeol would turn away, as people do when they meet a stranger’s eyes by accident.

Except Chanyeol, instead, is pinned to his place, and the whiskey glass he is polishing slips between his fingers and shatters on the floor, the glass breaking by his feet. He is glad that the noise gets lost in the sound of the applause, and he has a fleeting worry that Jongin’s mother will be upset with him about breaking yet another piece of property.

Chanyeol cleans up the broken shards before anyone notices. The club is starting to feel stuffy and warm so he unbuttons his collar and slips out the door for a quick cigarette. Outside, he watches the moonlight shifting over the vague outlines of the street shops. He inhales and exhales deeply, the smoke slowing down his racing heartbeat. When he returns inside the jazz club, the man is still there, feet crossed, a folded paperback between his hands. Chanyeol lets himself stare—there was something very picturesque about him that Chanyeol couldn’t quite place, like the sort of person an artist would stop and sketch.

Chanyeol stares until Jongin passes him a tray of whiskey to pass off to the group in the corner. As Chanyeol waits tables, he keeps an eye out, wondering when the man with the paperback and sharp eyes is going to ask for his bill.

But about an hour later, when Chanyeol looks back, the man is gone.

 

 

Chanyeol grew up in the jazz club. When his parents died, he found himself passed between several different people until finally, someone dropped him into Jongin’s family, who were more than welcoming but didn’t excuse him from earning his keep. But Chanyeol didn’t mind that so much. On off-days when the club isn’t busy, they let him bang around the drum kit. Chanyeol’s done it since he was little, even when the drum sticks were still longer than his arms. And he’d gotten good at it.

It’s about the only thing he _is_ good at. But it’s something, at least. Jongin had his saxophone and Chanyeol had the drums. They both played jazz, but never together. Jongin claimed Chanyeol’s rhythm was “impossible” and after a while, Chanyeol stopped caring.

Today is one of those off-days, a Tuesday afternoon. There are just two other patrons, both hunched over the bar, sipping drinks slowly. Chanyeol starts up with something simple, ambient, so as not to disrupt them. The beat blends in with the air, like radio static.

Then the door opens. And it’s him. It’s the man from Friday, with a messenger bag slung over one of his slim shoulders. The top of his brown hair is slightly damp from the morning drizzle, a pair of glasses are sitting low on his nose. He stops in the threshold, scanning the empty club, like he is checking if they’re open.

Jongin inclines his head. “Have a seat anywhere.”

The man nods. Chanyeol has to remind himself to keep drumming. Just as he looks back down at his hands to avoid eye contact, lest he’s caught staring, the man catches his gaze and the line of his thin lips part.

He doesn’t take a seat. Instead, he walks forward, and stops and watches Chanyeol. At the foot of the raised flooring where the small stage begins, the man puts down his bag and steps up.

“Think you can keep up?” he says.

Chanyeol’s beat falters. “Keep--? With… what?”

The man moves aside, left stage, and unbuttons the cuffs of his soft blue dress shirt. With his foot he drags back the piano bench and sits, adjusting himself until he’s the perfect distance from the pedal. Chanyeol doesn’t realize what is happening until the man says, “I’m going to lead.”

His fingers settle on the keys like falling flower petals—gentle, pretty, poised. They start high, then trail swiftly down the octave. Chanyeol’s heart jumps. The man begins his melody.

Chanyeol has never played with anyone before. He has never played for anyone but himself, but in a single moment, he thinks he understands why people play music together—the push and pull of the blended sounds are addicting. He starts playing louder, as if it’s some instinctual response to the man’s piano, and when Chanyeol hits the hi-hat cymbal double time, he thinks he sees a fleeting smile pass over the man’s face.

He gets more playful. His fingers begin to dance unevenly on the keys, straying further and further away from a recognizable chord progression. And Chanyeol feels his chest ignite, set alight by the beautiful, reckless sound of their duet.

When, exactly, their playing begins and ends, Chanyeol is unsure of. The man slows down eventually, until he’s just tinkling keys lightly above high C, the melody shifting into something more lethargic. Chanyeol matches him. The thrum of the drum beat is still shaking Chanyeol’s bones when the man looks over his shoulder at Chanyeol to flash him another bright smile. His thin fingers settle at his sides. Chanyeol watches them curl into the piano bench, transfixed by their pretty litheness.

“How riveting,” the man says on a light exhale. “You’re a fun partner.”

He stands and pushes the bench in and takes a step towards Chanyeol’s drums, extending his hand.

“I’m Baekhyun. Byun Baekhyun. What’s your name?”

“Chanyeol.”

“Chanyeol what?”

“I don’t know my last name.”

Baekhyun pauses, as if to assess the validity of that statement. Chanyeol takes his hand and shakes it politely. Once Baekhyun realizes that Chanyeol is not joking, he shrugs, and shoulders his messenger bag again.

Baekhyun turns to leave, and Chanyeol stands up abruptly, his chair scraping loudly against the chipped wood of the little stage.

“Wait—will—are you ever—” asks Chanyeol, twisting his drumstick in one hand idly.

Baekhyun’s eye colour, Chanyeol sees from up close, is a light brown, hazel colour—almost translucent, with spots of green. There is a kaleidoscope flash of expressions in his pupils alone.

“I go wherever the music is,” says Baekhyun, with a pensive swipe of his tongue across his lips, “So maybe we’ll see each other again, Chanyeol.” He gives him a wave and exits the club and Chanyeol watches him disappear around the street corner. And Baekhyun’s words ring around Chanyeol’s head for days, then weeks, then months; fascinating, almost pretty.

 

 

Months become years.

Chanyeol keeps playing music. And Baekhyun never does return to the club.

But the distant echoes of that bright, free piano melody never quite fade away for Chanyeol. And as he would learn, only beyond this life, that melody would stay with him longer than he would ever know, and deeper than he could have ever dreamt.

 

 

1923

All sorts of things are whispered about Kim Junmyeon; none of which, aside from the unfathomable wealth, Chanyeol learns, is actually true. Some say Junmyeon is the head of a mafia family. Some say he’s related to the monarchy. Some say he’s old and dying and is just trying to use up all his money before he hits the sack.

But Chanyeol finds out that Junmyeon is not a gang member, royalty, old nor dying. He does waste away his money on extravagant mansion parties every weekend, but not to use it up before he dies. He simply likes keeping his house bright and busy.

A little after his thirty-second birthday, Chanyeol moves closer to the city and buys the modest place right beside Junmyeon’s mansion which is how Chanyeol meets him. Junmyeon invites him over and they have a strange brunch that starts with tea and ends with wine. And at the end of the day, Chanyeol decides Junmyeon isn’t really his kind of person, but he is terribly charming and his company, oddly warm.

“You know, I hope you don’t mind those loud parties,” Junmyeon tells him, several weeks after Chanyeol has settled in. They are throwing darts in Junmyeon’s study.

“I don’t mind,” replies Chanyeol.

“Oh, but if you do, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

Chanyeol thinks about it. Probably not. “I suppose so.”

“If they do bother you, just let me know and I’ll call it off in a flash.” Junmyeon’s dart flies swift and hard into the dartboard, off-centre. “Why don’t you stop by one of them? This Saturday night.”

“Would that be okay?”

Junmyeon laughs, heartily. “Chanyeol, I’m personally giving you an invitation to a party that really no one is ever actually invited to.”

“Oh,” Chanyeol says, and ponders that without really comprehending it. “Sure, I’ll come.”

 

 

The party looks bigger inside than it does from outside. Chanyeol is almost pushed into the backyard pool twice, there is hardly enough room to maneuver. Junmyeon himself is famously out-of-sight, and Chanyeol learns that most everyone here tonight doesn’t actually know what Junmyeon looks like.

He mulls this over at the poolside bar, a martini set before him by the bartender, although he hadn’t even asked for a drink. Someone pulls the stool back on the seat beside him, and Chanyeol straightens his shoulders.

“Well, you’re new,” says the person.

Chanyeol pulls his glass away from his lips. The voice settles into him like a lilting melody tinkling vaguely in the back of his head. He turns, and it’s—

“Byun Baekhyun. Nice to meet you, new guy.”

Byun Baekhyun is dressed in a navy blue suit, with the collar of a white dress shirt unbuttoned underneath. When he raises his hand to alert the bartender for a drink, Chanyeol stares at his fingers. Long, pale, slim.

“How would you know I’m not a regular?” Chanyeol inquires, suddenly conscious of the line of his shoulders and the way he holds his glass. Chanyeol isn’t poor by any means, but he isn’t rich the way these people are rich. He earns his money at a nine-to-five job.

“Oh, I know everyone here,” Baekhyun replies. He throws his head back as he drinks, and Chanyeol watches the bump in his throat bob when he swallows. Baekhyun’s got sharp, sharp eyes that flash with something deeply invasive—as if he knows secrets about you that even you don’t know about yourself. His smiles are like Junmyeon’s; charming and pretty, but Baekhyun’s are sort of in an uncomfortable way. Chanyeol licks his dry lips.

“There’s hundreds—well, _more_ than hundreds of guests,” Chanyeol interjects. “You couldn’t really know them all.” He says this politely, a little casual, but his words feel redundant as if he can sense Baekhyun isn’t the type to give answers to questions.

“I know everyone and everyone knows me,” says Baekhyun, and doesn’t bother to clarify. “Are you the neighbour?”

“I am.”

“How exciting. Junmyeon told me he got a neighbour. A real, nice fellow.” Baekhyun drums his fingers lightly against his glass, one after the other in a steady rhythm. “You do seem a real, nice fellow. What’s your name?”

“Chanyeol.”

“Nice name, that is. Chanyeol.” He pulls up the sleeve of his navy suit and eyes the time on his watch. His lips press together and then he swallows the rest of his drink with a quick flick of his wrist. “I have somewhere I need to be soon, but it was nice speaking with you, Mr. Chanyeol. I’ll be seeing you again, yes?”

Chanyeol hadn’t planned on attending another party but he hears himself saying, “Yes, I suppose you will.”

Baekhyun’s gaze lingers on Chanyeol’s for a long moment before Baekhyun stands up from his stool, adjusting his suit. He shoots Chanyeol a short smile, a sharp tug at the corner of his mouth like a fisherman’s hook, and Chanyeol stares back dazedly until he remembers to blink. He gives Baekhyun a slight nod.

“You’ve got quite the handsome face, Chanyeol,” Baekhyun says quietly—so quietly, Chanyeol isn’t even sure he’s heard him. “Very boyish.”

“Jesus, Baekhyun! Making me look for you again, are you?”

A man in a striped suit appears at Baekhyun’s side, slipping a large arm around Baekhyun’s small waist and pulling him away. Chanyeol starts a little, at the gruffness of the voice, like a gunshot in a quiet room; a ridiculous thought, Chanyeol knows, because the music pulsing around them is deafening, but the voice seems to grate his insides, louder than any music. 

For a short, fleeting second, Chanyeol thinks Baekhyun’s tiny, hooked smirk wilts into a grimace, but the moment escapes him and Baekhyun is simply offering a parting wave in Chanyeol’s general direction, as his mysterious companion drags him back into the bustle of the party.

 

 

The following year of Chanyeol’s 1920s life, and perhaps the years that would follow as well, can be summarized by a few things.

First thing: Chanyeol asks Junmyeon, “Who is Byun Baekhyun?” and it takes Junmyeon a long time to reply. In the end, he tells Chanyeol that he and Baekhyun are distant cousins through their mothers and that yes, Baekhyun earns his own dollars but not doing anything you would like to know, Chanyeol.

“Why do you say that, Junmyeon?”

“Because you’ve got that same look everyone gets after they meet Byun Baekhyun.”

Chanyeol’s lips part. He scratches at his neck absently. “And what is that?”

“People fall in love with Baekhyun, and Baekhyun lives off of people falling in love with him. He relishes it, plays with it, and draws from it like a life source.” Junmyeon dumps his wine into the pool. The deep red pierces through the blue water. The liquids dance together, their colours exploding. His butler, standing at his side, pours him a new glass.

Junmyeon adds, “And you’ll feel very special. He’s got a way of making people feel special, you know.”

The next thing that happens is Baekhyun shows up a lot at Chanyeol’s house, and they share a lot of weekend mornings and later, weekend evenings, pressed up against each other in front of Chanyeol’s fireplace.

“Who was that guy from Junmyeon’s party, that first time?”

“Who?” Baekhyun’s head is settled on Chanyeol’s shoulder, sleepy and clingy.

“That guy. Who pulled you away.”

“Were you jealous, Mr. Chanyeol?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t be jealous. It takes too much energy.”

It is strange that Baekhyun does, indeed, have some unique quality that is so special, as Junmyeon had put it, and that specialness seems to transfer over to Chanyeol. He is captivated every time Baekhyun’s long eyelashes flutter in his sleep, or when his fingers trace warm circles on Chanyeol’s arm. But Chanyeol is most captivated when it is late at night, and Baekhyun starts mumbling, sometimes incoherent, sometimes unfiltered. Chanyeol knows it’s unfiltered because none of his speech is eloquent nor charming nor pretty. Sometimes it’s sad.

“I want to live somewhere not here, you know,” says Baekhyun, drowsily, sprawled out on the floor with red cheeks and half-shut eyes. “The beach. Open water. Open sunlight! Can’t you feel that warmth? Sunlight right on your fingertips, Chanyeol. Imagine it!”

Chanyeol isn’t sure why Baekhyun speaks about grand things as if they are unattainable. How could grand things be unattainable for someone already so grand? Chanyeol suspects he’ll never know. But the words slip out anyways, “I’ll go with you.”

Baekhyun’s laugh is soft, and breaks in the middle. “Where to?”

“To a beach house. Some place tropical. Anywhere you want.”

There is a long silence, and Baekhyun’s eyes are now closed and the smile on his face seems to have melted away along with the shadows in the candle-lit room. It reappears, as faint as the candlelight, and just as flickering.

Baekhyun moves towards Chanyeol, presses their mouths together like two feathers. Then Baekhyun exhales, lightly between his lips, “That is a very pretty thing to say.”

 

 

“Europe.”

Chanyeol almost drops the crystal whiskey glass in his hands. His head snaps up to look at Junmyeon, standing in the doorway of Chanyeol’s living room. Junmyeon’s leather shoes gleam against the chipped hardwood floor. Chanyeol hadn’t even heard him enter.

“Baekhyun is in Europe,” Junmyeon says. “Or so I hear.”

The blanket by the burnt out fireplace is still wrinkled and warm from where Baekhyun had fallen asleep the night before. _That is a very pretty thing to say…_ Words echoing over and over, as flimsy and distant as the ghost in Chanyeol’s heart.

 

 

1991

Chanyeol decides that twentieth-century high school was ridiculous.

He is seventeen years old and sitting in a humid classroom with chairs that make his ass numb and air so thick, he feels like he’s inhaling dust motes and chalk dust instead of oxygen.

There’s the whip of the ruler against his desk, startling him up, just barely grazing his head.

“Sleeping again, Chanyeol?” The teacher looks more bored than angry.

“Literary analysis is the perfect lullaby, Miss,” he mumbles tiredly. The ruler comes down again on his desk. This time, he doesn’t even blink.

“You can spend the rest of the period in the office then, Chanyeol.”

So Chanyeol spends the rest of the period in the office, and honestly, it’s a much more peaceful place for a nap so he doesn’t really mind. The drone of the AC, the ambient ring and beep of the telephone, the monotone tick of the clock, all lull him back into a half-sleep.

Then there’s a voice. And it isn’t the secretary telling him to wake up.

“Yes. Byun. That’s the name.” Chanyeol’s eyes fly open. “I’m picking up my brother’s yearbook. Yeah, he graduated last year.”

A boy—slim figure, black hair, blue jeans—is leaning over the secretary’s counter, murmuring things Chanyeol now cannot hear. That voice—that voice humming piano melodies, whispering sweet little words in Chanyeol’s ear—that voice at the very edges of Chanyeol’s fuzzy dreams, smooth and raspy and playful all at once. Turn around, turn around, turn around, Chanyeol chants in his head.

The secretary passes the boy a white, glossy book and then, Chanyeol realizes, he’s stepping out of the office. Leaving. He’s leaving! Just like that. Without so much as a glance at his face—is it even him? Or is Chanyeol dreaming it up again? It wouldn’t be the first time. Sometimes, Chanyeol swears he can hear the rise and fall of trumpets and laughter and cheering, swears he can smell that deep, expensive perfume, taste the wine at the back of his throat. Sometimes he swears he can feel lips on his lips—

The boy is out the door before Chanyeol has even blinked away the daydream, like grains of sand slipping smooth and sad through his fingertips.

 

 

Countless lifetimes pass this way. Brief encounters, split-second glimpses that don’t even feel real. But it is always him. Chanyeol is sure that it is always him.

Chanyeol sees him as a face walking by on the street, as a commuter across a subway platform, as a patron in the window of a diner – transitory snapshots that disappear in the blink of an eye, as thin and elusive as water.

 

 

1449

The new robes are too big. They open up long and wide at the hands, drape past his feet and pool at the ankles. It’s grossly itchy, the material—whatever fine silk his mother had ordered from abroad was grating Chanyeol’s skin from the moment he’d been dressed in them.

“But must I?” Chanyeol had tried to escape the evening court dinner by whining to Yixing, his personal servant. "I'm very… busy.”

Yixing, for all his kind grace, had given him a dubious look. Chanyeol was too tired to call him out for it, and also, Yixing was just too sweet to ever scold thoroughly. “The Queen has insisted on your presence in greeting the guests.”

“Guests?” Chanyeol sat up in bed. Three lady servants had walked into his room, curtseying, before bringing in his clothes for the evening.

“Yes, the northern princess and her family will be in the palace for the next four weeks.” Yixing opened up the bed canopy and helped Chanyeol to his feet. The line of Yixing’s mouth had been stiff, unusually tight, the sort of expression Chanyeol hadn’t seen on his face since Chanyeol was a child—a careful reluctance.

Chanyeol obediently let himself be dressed. When the servants left, he stopped Yixing at the door.

“What are these robes?” asked Chanyeol, pulling at the ridiculous sleeves.

“They are king’s robes, sir,” Yixing replied, licking his lips.

“King’s?”

“The Queen had them made.”

“Why?”

Yixing blinked, shoulders tensed. Chanyeol hated cornering him like this, and he hated that Yixing was always thrown in these precarious situations. The Queen never told Chanyeol things herself; Yixing was Chanyeol’s link to everything that happened around the palace.

“There are a couple things I must tell you, sir,” Yixing started, closing the bedroom door. He took off his hat.

“Please tell me, then,” Chanyeol said. Too terse, he realized a second later. He backpedaled, clearing his throat. “You can speak freely, Yixing.”

“The Queen has plans for you to take the throne.” 

“Of course she does.”

“I mean,” Yixing shifts from one foot to another, “She plans for it… very soon. The northern family has a daughter.” He left it at that, and Chanyeol rolled his eyes.

“All right. Is that all?” Chanyeol was decidedly too tired to fight. A marriage he could handle, really. He’d been braced for this since he was a baby, which is why he didn’t understand the steady uncertainty that remained on Yixing’s face.

“The other thing, sir,” said Yixing, “I have been summoned back to China.”

Chanyeol went boneless, as if his spine might fold in at any moment. “You have what?” he said hollowly.

Yixing would not meet his eye anymore. “Your m—The Queen requested your personal servant be someone from the north. Someone who knows the palace of your betrothed and can advise you better.”

“This is complete bullshit.” There was an absurd, dazed quality to Chanyeol’s tone. This, to him, was a betrayal.

Yixing made a face, something like a grimace but more apologetic than angry. “Please do not speak so unkindly, Your Highness. It is the way it must be.”

It was strange, the sound of those words, the taste of them in the air—the weight and finality that came with goodbyes.

What was there left to say in that moment? Chanyeol took a step forward hesitantly, held his arms out in invitation. Yixing looked stunned, so Chanyeol pulled him forward first and hugged him. It was awkward—in a warm, sheepish way. Perhaps even more so for Chanyeol than it was for Yixing.

Chanyeol could count, probably, on one hand how many people he’d hugged in all his lifetimes—how many goodbyes he’d endured that he’d actually cared about. Not many at all. There were very few people he remembers from his old lives—the farther away the life, the blurrier the memory. And the truth was, soon Yixing, no matter how much Chanyeol cared for him in this life, would become the same—a hazy, lingering image of a person that once was.

The thing was, Chanyeol never met anyone twice. This always held true. For all but one.

“Isn’t that right, Chanyeol?”

He looks up from his soup, a soup he is struggling to eat without the sleeves of this ridiculous robe falling into the broth. Dinner, conversation, mindless chatter. They pull back into focus.

“Sorry?” he says.

The Queen’s voice is tight, as if she is squeezing her throat to hold back certain words. “I was just telling Princess Jinri about your interest in art. An interest she shares with you.”

“I see. That’s very—“ Chanyeol starts. But really, what did he care whether this girl liked art or sewing or shovelling horse crap in her spare time? “Lovely,” he finishes. His father, bless him, coughs on his wine to mask a laugh. Beside him, the Queen presses two fingers to her temple.

After the dinner is over, an event that could only be described as stifling and dreadful, his father summons Chanyeol into his study.

“Son, this won’t take long.” He waves away the servant, who’s come in to change the oil in the lantern. The door closes, and then they are alone. “Chanyeol. Your mother doesn’t know how to tell you this. But I—“ He clears his throat. There is an unfolded parchment rolled open on the desk in front of him. He sets down his quill, folds his hands atop each other. “Well, I know that you know already. I am very sick, son. The throne will be yours much sooner than we all anticipated.”

Chanyeol casts his eyes down.

“I know you are only nineteen. And you do not care much for Jinri,” his father sighs. “But you will try, won’t you? For your mother?”

Chanyeol bites his lip, hoping he won’t sound petulant. “She is sending away Yixing. How could she send away Yixing? Of _all_ people.”

His father nods, grimacing. “I advised her not to. I’m sorry, but she insists.”

That night, Chanyeol lets a servant he’s never seen draw his bath and lay out his sleepwear and fix his bed. He sends away the young girl who comes to bring him nighttime tea, and she closes the door carefully behind her.

A knock comes only a minute later.

“Enter.”

The door clicks open. Chanyeol keeps his eyes fixed on his book, and it’s the voice that hits him first. Always that voice.

“Your Majesty,” it says softly. “Pardon the intrusion.”

And Chanyeol looks up, meeting hazel eyes that seem to glitter impossibly in the lantern light. 

The man bows, hand pressed against his chest. “Byun Baekhyun. From Princess Jinri’s court.”

 

 

Wedding preparations happen in a whirlwind of bustle and grand dinners. The palace buzzes, never seems to sleep, and is decorated elaborately, beyond anything Chanyeol’s ever seen. The Queen creates a schedule for him, which consists of a walk and lunch with the princess at least twice a week among many other things. And despite his numerous requests, the Queen does not allow for Chanyeol to get his robes altered.

“Those robes are tradition,” she tells him plainly, seeming affronted by the mere prospect of having them changed.

“It’s tradition to have sleeves so long that I can’t make use of my own hands?”

Jinri, who is walking on his other side, giggles at this, and it is perhaps this giggle that saves Chanyeol from his mother’s wrath. She lets him off with a warning—“watch your mouth next time, please”—and then leaves the two to enjoy the garden on their own.

“How long has Baekhyun been in your palace?” Chanyeol asks Jinri casually. 

She hums contemplatively, stopping to smell a patch of yellow flowers. 

“He was my brother’s personal servant before coming down here,” she replies, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. She picks one of the flowers from the batch and holds it in her hands. “I think he’s been with us a very long time, actually.”

“And he is… nice, yes?”

Jinri laughs, light and pretty, and not for the first time, Chanyeol realizes she would be lovely on the arm of someone who deserved her.

“You’ve asked a lot about Baekhyun, Prince Chanyeol,” she says. Her tone shifts, and she smiles with something like pity. “It must have been hard to part with your previous servant. I know the feeling, Your Majesty. But you can trust Baekhyun. You are in good hands.”

 

 

Life was a curious thing. Chanyeol knew that, perhaps more than anyone else. It was incredible how many lives he could live, how many different kinds of people he could be, across the world and across history. And yet each life never seemed to truly belong to him. Because if it did, Chanyeol knows that he would never choose _this_ life—this slow, dreadful pain of being so close to the glittering glow that was Baekhyun, so close but never within arms-reach, as if Baekhyun only ever existed at the very edge of Chanyeol’s fingertips.

And this Baekhyun, although more soft-spoken than the Baekhyuns of Chanyeol’s collective memory, is the same Baekhyun he’s always known. Different, of course—but the same, as well. Chanyeol knows he’s the same, can feel it as surely as he feels oxygen filtering through his nose and filling up his lungs.

Chanyeol wants to scream things sometimes: Why did you never return to the jazz bar? Why did you go to Europe? Why don’t you know me the way I know you?

But these are never the conversations they actually have. Chanyeol knows that this Baekhyun does not like him. Baekhyun is not the same servant Yixing was. Yixing spoiled Chanyeol, always followed him around lest Chanyeol need him to fetch food or the like, and was kind to him even when he was in a bad mood.

But Baekhyun, even on his best days, smiles sparingly, if at all. He comes into the room in the mornings, recites Chanyeol’s schedule, calls for the servants to dress Chanyeol for the day, and then he leaves—never to be seen until meals and bed time.

“Baekhyun,” Chanyeol says one night, just as Baekhyun is about to leave.

“Yes?” Baekhyun asks, and if he exhaled any louder, it could have been a sigh.

“You should know, you can feel free to speak openly and frankly with me,” Chanyeol tells him, pulling the bed covers up over his legs. “I think the sooner we are comfortable with each other, the better. You can call me ‘Chanyeol’, when we are alone.”

Baekhyun blinks at him, then nods once. “Noted, Chanyeol,” he says, so easily it’s almost unbelievable. Fifteen years, and Yixing never once called Chanyeol by his name. “Good night, if that is all.”

“One more thing, Baekhyun.”

Baekhyun turns, looking mildly unimpressed. He does sigh this time, and it seems he makes no attempt to hide it.

“Is there something I’m not doing? Or a particular reason you don’t like me?” Chanyeol asks, watching the movement of Baekhyun’s expression as he does. “Be frank.”

Baekhyun, for a second, looks surprised and maybe concerned that perhaps he has been too offensive. But the look disappears almost as quickly as it had come.

“You are right, Your Majesty,” he says, stepping forward and shutting the bedroom door. “I do not think favourably of you.”

Chanyeol swallows, toes curling under the silk of his bedsheets. “Would you enlighten me as to why?”

“I think,” Baekhyun begins, pausing to frame his words. Then he goes on, “I think you are unkind and do not take your responsibilities seriously. I do not think you’re fit to take the throne and I do not think you truly care about Princess Jinri. She deserves more than you. She left behind the boy she loved for you, did you know that? For her family and for her people, she uprooted her life. I think you are rather short-sighted.”

His jaw twitches resolutely, as if to steel himself from a punishment that is not coming. Chanyeol studies that gleam in Baekhyun’s eye—unmoving even in his vulnerability. But above all, Baekhyun looks unapologetic, gaze firm and steady.

He bows to take his leave.

“I think so too,” Chanyeol says quietly. Baekhyun freezes. “Jinri, I mean. She deserves someone who wants her.”

Baekhyun glances at Chanyeol over his shoulder, as if unsure he’s truly heard him. 

“But you know,” Chanyeol exhales, pulling his blanket up to his shoulders. The lantern light stretches Baekhyun’s shadow onto the bed covers, through the open slit of the canopy. “I also know what it’s like. To love someone whom the universe will never let you have.”

Baekhyun’s eyes stay fixed for a moment, looking at Chanyeol’s curled figure through underneath his long, thin eyelashes. He turns back around.

“Maybe love will find you in another life, Your Majesty,” Baekhyun says, after a heavy pause. “For now, you should love the person the universe has given you. In this life.” He grabs the lantern on his way out and the room turns dark.

 

 

Chanyeol marries Jinri in the spring. On their wedding night, Jinri sits at the edge of the bed, hair loose around her shoulders. When Chanyeol comes in, she looks up at him through her bangs. A long minute goes by. Then her fingers move to the intricate strings on her robe that tie the front closed. She fumbles with it for a moment.

“Can you help me with this?” she whispers hoarsely. Her cheeks are sullen and her voice is weak, like a ghost in the moonlight. “The servants tied it so tight, I’m afraid.”

Chanyeol moves toward her slowly, as if approaching a skittish animal. She flinches slightly when his fingers graze her skin. He undoes the first string and when he looks at her again, her jaw is clenched tightly, as if in pain. He steps away from her.

“I am going to grab your night clothes. Wait here,” he says. She glances up, in fear.

“No, you cannot send for the servants,” she says, panicked. “My parents—they’ll all know we didn’t—“

“I’ll fetch the clothes myself. No one will know,” he replies.

He returns with her garments and hands them to her. She starts crying even harder and Chanyeol is at a terrible loss. He does not know how to console her so he says nothing. Instead, he turns his back and tells her he will wait until she is finished changing.

With her clothes back on, she climbs under the bed covers. There is a fragrance burning in the air—lavender? Vanilla? The rose petals scattered atop the blankets have a tackiness to them. Chanyeol sees her eyeing them too. He swipes them off the bed with his hand and sighs.

“Would you be more comfortable if I slept on the rug?” he asks her.

Her eyes go wide. “No! That would be horrible, Your Majesty!” she says, then catches herself. “I mean, thank you for the kind thought. But it’s all right.”

So he slides into the bed beside her, blowing the candle out. “Good night, then,” he says, nestling into the pillow.

She is quiet for a while. Then she replies softly, “Good night, Chanyeol.”

Jinri is slow to fall asleep. Chanyeol counts a full twenty minutes, and she is still awake when he turns to look at her over his shoulder.

“My father expects me to have a son within the year,” she says, when she catches Chanyeol staring. There are tear tracks down her cheeks. “What am I to tell him now?”

Chanyeol glances up at the ceiling, or where he imagines a ceiling to be. It is too dark to really tell. He hears Baekhyun’s voice in his head, as he closes his eyes again and tries to find sleep from where it had escaped him. _Maybe love will find you in another life._

“Let’s worry about issues in the morning, Jinri,” he says to her. For a short second, he opens his eyes to find Jinri glancing over at him and Chanyeol is tempted to throw her a smile—something reassuring, maybe a squeeze of the hand. But then she looks away, closes her eyes and lets out a breath.

_Maybe love will find you… Maybe love will find you…_

Chanyeol falls asleep to this, chanting it in his head like a prayer to the universe—a prayer for the both of them.

 

 

Jinri gives birth the next year. She grows much happier in the months that follow. Chanyeol finds that she enjoys spending time with the baby, it gives her life and makes her laugh, so he leaves them be. 

One day, she receives a letter from home and it is from the northern boy she had left behind. The first letter that arrives, she brings straight to Chanyeol in a panic.

“He is striking a correspondence with you,” Chanyeol says, skimming the letter.

She is standing by the window, morning light falling into the dining room. “He is,” she replies, arms wrapped around her small, corseted torso. “But I did not initiate this. I assure you.”

“But you still love him, yes?”

She blinks at him, disbelieving. Then she realizes, suddenly, that Chanyeol is serious. She drops her eyes, turns away from the window and the stream of sunlight. 

From then on, once a month, Chanyeol helps Jinri send letters back home without rising too much suspicion. The tactic was that Chanyeol would send them in his own name, and would send them only through Baekhyun who could get the letters north safely, instead of through courier.

They are all in the garden when Baekhyun asks him about it.

“Your Highness,” Baekhyun says, in his manner of saying things with no malice but no kindness, either. Something about the way he said _Your Highness_ was incredibly insincere—never rude, but ringing with something deeply hollow.

“Yes?” Chanyeol looks up from his parchment.

“May I sit,” Baekhyun says, though it doesn’t sound like a question.

“By all means,” Chanyeol returns to his sketch. Across the garden, Jinri is playing with their son, teaching him about the different flowers.

“I know who those letters are for, and I know they are Princess Jinri’s, not yours.”

“I know you know,” says Chanyeol. “And you’re expected to keep it to yourself.”

Over the months, Baekhyun had gone from hostile to distant to a lukewarm friendliness. For now, that was fine with Chanyeol. It was progress, at least.

“But do you think that is really helping Princess Jinri?” Baekhyun asks, glancing over at her when she lets out a bright laugh that rings through the trees. “You’re just making her miss home.”

“It’s what she wants,” replies Chanyeol, dipping his quill into the ink bottle. “When she doesn’t want it anymore, I will stop it for her.”

“But what if she never stops? Did you ever think about that possibility?” Baekhyun demands, a little too sharp if he was speaking to anyone else.

Chanyeol lifts an eyebrow. “She will be fine,” he says. Baekhyun gives him a dubious look but says no more.

“You know,” Chanyeol continues, “She came to me with that boy’s letter. She told me about it right away, even allowed me to read it. She trusts me, is what I’m saying.”

Baekhyun holds his gaze for a long moment, eyes almost golden in the sunlight. He stands from the bench, dusting off his robes.

“Trust is not love, I know,” Chanyeol says, when Baekhyun grows quiet. “But it is close enough.” He folds up his parchment, rolling it neatly. “At least, for this life.”

Jinri, carrying the baby, walks over to Chanyeol’s bench. “We’re heading in for lunch now. Would you like to join us?”

Chanyeol shakes his head. “You two go on.”

The ladies-in-waiting arrive to escort Jinri to the dining hall. Chanyeol and Baekhyun watch her as she goes, into the courtyard and then disappearing behind the double doors of the palace.

“Why do you detach yourself?” Baekhyun asks suddenly, his voice sounding strange in the quiet buzz of the garden. Chanyeol has unfolded a new parchment for a new drawing.

“From what?” says Chanyeol.

“From everything.”

Chanyeol’s hand fumbles. The ink bottle wobbles, threatening to topple over. Baekhyun lifts his head up to the sky, a hand over his eyes to shield the sun. Chanyeol stares at the pale column of his throat, at the soft skin behind his ears where Chanyeol had, in another life, whispered sweet nothings against. _I’ll go with you… anywhere you want._ In a haze of alcohol and laughter and expensive perfume—

Baekhyun speaks again, and Chanyeol’s gaze snaps back to the right lifetime. “Why do you detach yourself from it all?”

Chanyeol’s lips feel like glue, as if he’s scared that if he opens his mouth too wide, too many things, from every life he has ever lived, will spill out all at once, in a single moment.

“Because,” Chanyeol says softly, staring at the blank sheet of parchment before him, “Eventually, you’ll die, and the world will reset and whatever life you had before, never happened.”

Baekhyun blinks. “It’s all for nothing, you mean.”

“We’ll forget it all, in the end.” Chanyeol grabs his quill, glides it across his blank sheet in a smooth, black line.

“That’s sad.”

Chanyeol pauses. “Sad?”

“I think,” Baekhyun says, lips pressed firmly, “you should see marriage as that parchment paper. Life, too.”

“What?”

Baekhyun nods at the single curved line across the sheet. “You should see marriage—life—as an opportunity, not a duty. A chance to create something, even if you’re starting blank.”

Chanyeol’s quill hovers for too long over the parchment. A dot of ink falls onto the middle of the page, but he barely notices.

“It’s… harder than that,” Chanyeol says, glancing at his page uncertainly. “Love is much greyer than that.”

Baekhyun shakes his head, arms crossed. The way he drums his fingers against his arm has Chanyeol distracted for a second—they beat evenly, in steady intervals, like the metronome of a piano.

“Is it, though?” Baekhyun says, walking into the shade of a nearby tree, leaning against its trunk. “I think that you know you’re marrying someone right when you can look at them and see opportunity. When you can think to yourself, ‘It would be a privilege to be loved by them.’”

Baekhyun smiles, then, feather-light and as thin as air. Chanyeol hears the words reverberate in endless echoes, through his ears, down his body, all the way to the tips of his toes.

A breeze comes to rustle the tree leaves around them and the blades of grass at their feet. Chanyeol stares into the gold-tinted hazel gleam of Baekhyun’s pupils, and sees, at once, a whole past and a whole future—and as if they were two bullet trains flying by in opposite directions on the same train track, Chanyeol feels this past and future converging, crashing together, meeting in the middle, in this glorious, sad, impossible present.

And if there was anything that followed this single moment, this single lifetime, it was this unshakeable new perception of Chanyeol’s universe—that there were still constants in his ever-changing realities. Like the sun and moon and sky and stars, the same ones hanging over him in every life—and the same Byun Baekhyun, tilting the present off its axis until Chanyeol felt as if the past and future suddenly melted away; and under the shine of Baekhyun’s smile, the glitter of his gaze, time ceased to exist.

 

 

2700

“Well, well, well, fuck me up a wall—look’it what we have here.”

Jongdae pushes a ring of artificial smoke out of his mouth. He’s been taking drags from his cigarette since this afternoon and, fake or not, Chanyeol finds it mildly gross that someone can smoke for six hours straight.

Chanyeol doesn’t look up from where he’s mixing a cocktail for a cyborg and his lady friend. The man has a whole metal left arm, expensive hologram attachment and all, and the woman, with her even-toned cyan-blue skin, is evidently just as rich. She is at least a quarter human, if not half, and a flawless skin job like that is worth at least the equivalent of two months of Chanyeol’s paycheck. He wants a mountain-sized tip from them, so when Jongdae has his back turned, Chanyeol hands them a small platter of skewered meat on the house.

“Ain’t that a sight to see,” Jongdae whistles low under his breath. He is bent forward on the bar counter, elbows propped up as he stares out into the early evening crowd. The ship has just made its second stop, and all the barely-legal teenagers from the moon bars have just boarded and piled into the casino.

“What exactly am I looking at?” Chanyeol asks dully. It’s only about 12AM, and the patrons usually don’t get interesting until the ship gets out of the Milky Way. He scans the crowd with mild disinterest.

Jongdae points with his pinky, lifting his hand back up to his lips to take a drag. “Dontchu recognize that face? Swear I seen ‘im in the television screens lately.”

Chanyeol doesn’t know where Jongdae is looking and frankly, does not bother to try and find out. The cyborg and the lady call his attention again, and they order three more meat platters, so Chanyeol goes to prepare them right away.

When Chanyeol returns, Jongdae is still muttering nonsensically to himself, slouched over the countertops.

“Okay. That is _definitely_ him, Chanhyuk!” Jongdae exclaims, suddenly jumping upright.

“Chanyeol,” says Chanyeol flatly.

Jongdae doesn’t hear him. He scrambles to find his hologram watch somewhere behind the bottles of tequila. He taps the device and it flies open. “He’s been all over them news.”

“I don’t watch the news.”

“Wait, lemme find ‘im,” Jongdae waves away a myriad of webpages, scrolling through them rapidly. “He’s got, like, purple hair. D’you see ‘im? Or magenta, or whatever that shit is. Look, he’s standing by the poker table.”

Jongdae nods into the distance. Chanyeol’s eyes find the poker table. Magenta hair is easy to find, and once Chanyeol is looking, he sees that the man stands out like a burning airship in the middle of open space.

And even though his hair is magenta, his jacket glittering with silver sequins, and a plasma gun attached to his hip, Chanyeol tenses all the same.

Thousands of people flooded the ship day in and day out—from thousands of planets, thousands of species, across millions of galaxies.

And yet—

“God fuckin’ damn it he fuckin’ wants a drink, don’t he?” Jongdae throws his hologram watch under the counter again, and proceeds to curse every ancient deity in existence. “He’s walkin’ over here! What the _fuck_ are we supposed to do? Alert the police?”

“No,” Chanyeol says immediately. “Let me, uh, handle it.”

Jongdae scoffs. “If any of us die, it’s all on you.”

“Um, who even is this guy?” Chanyeol asks, suddenly alarmed by the level concern in Jongdae, who, by the way, once set the back kitchen on fire and hadn’t bothered to put it out because he ‘didn’t feel like it.’

Jongdae shuts off his fake cigarette after a final drag and shakes his head. “Ever heard of EXO?”

“Vaguely,” says Chanyeol. They were a group of space pirates from way, way out in the wasteland galaxies.

“Well, _that_ guy,” Jongdae falls to a whisper as Baekhyun gets closer to the bar, “Magenta-haired demon. Last week, he single-handedly looted an entire luxury ship and fuckin’ escaped with a shit ton of cash.”

Chanyeol blinks, disbelievingly. “He’s… human, though.”

“I fucking _know,_ right!” Jongdae whisper-screams. “No one knows how the fucking-fuck he got recruited! He’s, like, pure-blood human, man. As human as _your_ pasty ass. Born and raised on Earth and everything.” Chanyeol was an Earth native, but he was in the minority. Even Jongdae had grown up in the Martian colonies.

The three of them are the only humans on the ship right now, as far as Chanyeol can tell. And Baekhyun is now at the bar, pulling a silver stool back with ease and taking a seat. Jongdae kicks Chanyeol in the shin and runs off to take a non-existent order from the cyborg man and the woman.

“What can I get you?” Chanyeol asks steadily.

Apparently, space-pirate Baekhyun means lightly glossed lips and thick, silver eyeliner rimmed around orange contact lenses. He adjusts the lapels of his sequined jacket and Chanyeol is rendered momentarily blind from all the sparkles.

“Beer,” Baekhyun replies, with the distinct sing-song tilt of his voice.

Chanyeol blinks. “Just? Uh, beer?”

“Mhm. Regular ol’ beer.” Baekhyun takes out a cigarette—a real one—and a lighter.

Chanyeol has to go into the back fridge to grab one, and when he returns, Baekhyun is blowing smoke lazily out of his mouth. Chanyeol slides him his beer on a coaster.

“You wouldn’t happen to have an ashtray, would you?” Baekhyun says, holding his cigarette loosely between his index finger and thumb.

“Um. No, unfortunately not.” 

Baekhyun grips the base of his beer bottle, tipping it in Chanyeol’s direction. “Thanks,” he murmurs, and chugs back a large gulp. His nails are painted gold. The colour gleams in the artificial light as he drums his fingers on the counter. Chanyeol clears his throat, tears his eyes away, before he starts imagining a piano melody beneath the movement of Baekhyun’s pale hands.

“What’s your name?” asks Baekhyun, voice caught somewhere between playful and lazy.

“Um. It’s Chanyeol.”

Baekhyun runs his hand through his purple hair, pushing it up over his forehead. “Chanyeol,” he echoes. “That’s cute.”

Chanyeol doesn’t know what to say to that so he just chokes a bit on the fake-oxygen air and pretends to wipe down non-existent spills with his rag.

“I’m Baekhyun, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“You must know that already, though,” says Baekhyun. He winks when Chanyeol shoots him a frantic look. Chanyeol’s mouth parts, confused. There’s no way—

“Recognize me from the news?” Baekhyun asks.

Chanyeol feels his shoulders deflate. Right. Of course. He licks his lips. “Oh, well, yes. I mean, vaguely. My co-worker recognized you.”

Baekhyun chuckles. “Is that why he ran away?”

Chanyeol looks over at Jongdae, who has struck up a conversation with the cyborg man on the other side of the bar. Chanyeol shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Shouldn’t you be scared too?” Baekhyun says, tilting his head back with another sip of his beer. If Chanyeol stares hard enough, he can see the faint sheen of Baekhyun’s contact lenses; the thin, plastic-y gleam to it that indicates his orange-coloured pupils are fake. Or maybe Chanyeol’s mind is just trying too hard to find the original hazel colour underneath.

“No,” Chanyeol says. “I don’t think you’ll kill me. You have no reason to.”

Baekhyun laughs loudly, melodic and clear, but with a dangerous dip in tone. “You really are cute, aren’t you?” he hums, contemplative. His orange eyes scan up and down Chanyeol’s figure. Then he’s chugging his beer again, slamming it down on the counter. “You’re human, right?”

Chanyeol throws his rag in the sink and runs water over his hands. “I am.”

“One hundred percent, right?”

“Yes. And you are too, aren’t you?” Chanyeol presses.

Baekhyun looks taken aback for a second, not in an offended or incredulous way, but just genuine surprise. He flashes Chanyeol a wide grin. Baekhyun, with all his glitter and colour, could pass for being three quarters human. Or maybe half, if he knows how to lie well. (Which Chanyeol supposes he does.) But there are little things that give him away – the beer, the cigarette, the Earth accent that seeps in every couple words. Chanyeol hasn’t heard an accent like that in ages.

“You’re rather observant,” Baekhyun states, smiling around the lip of his bottle. “Has anyone ever told you that you look almost painfully human?”

“Yes, actually. I get it almost daily from my co-worker,” Chanyeol jerks a lazy thumb towards Jongdae.

Baekhyun chuckles. “It’s the boy-ish thing you’ve got going on. All prim and proper, like someone’s taken you out of a movie from six hundred years ago.”

Chanyeol shoots him a small, uneasy smile. “I still spend a few months, every other year, on Earth.”

“Do you, now?” Baekhyun lifts an eyebrow. “That’s adorable. I haven’t been there since I was ten, actually.” He puts his cigarette between his lips; at the edge of his mouth, at the curve of his smirk. “How old are you? In Earth years, of course.”

“Uh,” Chanyeol does the calculation in his head. “Twenty-eight or so. Yourself?”

“Same.” A trail of smoke escapes his mouth, and Chanyeol is so fascinated by the shape of it as it unfurls in the air between them and then disappears. “So. What now, Chanyeol? You gonna slip away and call the authorities on me soon?” He leans his elbows forward with comfortable ease. The edge of his cigarette is burning up slowly, into a stub. 

Chanyeol blinks at him. “Why would I do that?”

Baekhyun’s light amusement falters for a second, before it returns. “Why wouldn’t you?” he argues. He takes a final drag of his cigarette and then lets it fall on the counter. The smoke has barely left his lips as he brings the beer bottle to his mouth.

Chanyeol realizes he doesn’t really have an answer. Baekhyun is right – there’s no reason Chanyeol _shouldn’t_ turn him in. But—

Baekhyun tilts his head patiently. His magenta bangs fall into the pale, orange light of his eyes.

“You’ve done me no personal wrong,” Chanyeol says, after a moment.

“Oh boy, even the way you speak,” Baekhyun laughs brightly, gaze fixed so fully on Chanyeol now that it’s almost disconcerting. “Well, thank you for your kindness, Chanyeol. You’ve spared me yet another day and for that I extend my deepest gratitude.” His tone is mocking now, but Chanyeol doesn’t mind – in fact, beneath it all, Chanyeol figures there’s some warmth in there. He smiles as Baekhyun pushes his bangs out of his face.

“You do very dangerous work for someone who is worried about the police,” says Chanyeol. He can feel the slightest lurch in the ship, meaning they’ve made their last Milky Way stop. The patrons are piling in now. Some are making beelines for the bar, and Chanyeol hopes Jongdae isn’t feeling too lazy to deal with them.

“Worried?” Baekhyun sputters around the lip of his bottle. “Worried is not the word, Chanyeol. Not the word, at _all_.” Another deep laugh escapes him, as if the very idea of ‘worried’ is the most ridiculous thing he’s heard in ages. He points his index finger at Chanyeol, with a fiery stare. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m in this business because I’m quite good at stealing, it makes me rich, and I’m too lazy to learn any useful skills.” His gaze lightens, though only by a fraction. “Like bartending, for example.”

Chanyeol looks down at his polished shot glasses. “Bartending is indeed a very useful skill.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” Baekhyun winks. “Though I do think with looks like yours, you could be doing something more glamourous.”

Chanyeol looks off into the sea of people beyond the bar, to distract himself from Baekhyun’s dangerously pretty smile. “You’d be surprised how many patrons have spilled to me their darkest secrets. I’m a therapist, more than a drink mixer, really,” murmurs Chanyeol.

Baekhyun hums, setting his bottle down with a hollow thud. His drink has emptied. “I’m not surprised,” he says softly, almost too low for Chanyeol to hear over the buzz of the space ship. “People feel like they can trust you.” Baekhyun gives him another smile, something gentler than before. Then he’s pushing the stool back, rolling up his sleeves, and standing up from his seat.

Chanyeol’s heart pounds. “You’re leaving?”

Baekhyun nods at his empty beer bottle. “Unfortunately we’ve run out of time, Chanyeol.” There’s a chorus of shouts coming from somewhere left of the bar, but none of it registers in Chanyeol’s mind. He’s too busy trying to fight the panic rush coursing through his chest – Baekhyun is leaving. Again. A single conversation, come and gone.

Chanyeol comes to his senses a moment too late. Baekhyun is smiling, waving goodbye, dropping a hand to his waist, pulling his plasma gun out of its holster –

There’s a flash of movement, frenzied shouting that suddenly sounds louder than it had been a second ago, and then glass is shattering from a stray bullet – guests scream in terror, fall to the ground, hide behind slot machines and under poker tables.

And in the midst of it all, a herd of policemen, guns out, come stampeding towards the bar. Baekhyun lifts his plasma gun slowly – with no haste and no effort – and then he’s being tackled to the ground, four bodies piled over him as Chanyeol watches on in semi-disbelief. Baekhyun is pulled to his feet, two men on either side, keeping him in place. Another man comes up behind him to confiscate his weapon, cuffing his hands behind his back.

“Baekhyun –“ Chanyeol says weakly, and Baekhyun, somehow, hears him. He turns to look at Chanyeol over his shoulder, his smile still pressed onto his face.

“Baekhyun, I swear I didn’t—“

“I know,” says Baekhyun. He shrugs, as best as he can with his hands bound, “It was going to happen sooner or later. My face is very famous, you know.” He winks at Chanyeol.

“But—“ The words clog at Chanyeol’s throat, fists curling at his sides. The police are starting to tug Baekhyun away, as they assure the guests with their clerical, bland voices that everything is fine, there’s no danger, please resume your frivolous night out.

Chanyeol watches as the patrons slowly return to their poker tables, to their mind-numbing entertainment, as if nothing had happened. And Chanyeol feels a suffocating tide come over him, towering over his head and drowning him as he feels the remnants of this lifetime spiral into the drain.

In the short second of silence that has followed, Baekhyun reads Chanyeol’s lost expression and hollers over his shoulder, “Lighten up, Chanyeol. Your face is so much cuter with a smile.”

Chanyeol’s voice is hollow, disconnected from his body. “You’ll come back… won’t you…”

Chanyeol thinks he sees a slight hesitation, but he tells himself he’d imagined it. Baekhyun, stunned, flashes him a grin. “Definitely,” he says to Chanyeol. “Space prison is a joke, let me tell you.” A policeman shoves Baekhyun’s head around roughly, and Chanyeol watches them escort him out, all the way to the ship’s hangar, watching as his magenta hair melts away into the crowd.

 

 

“A guy like that,” Jongdae says, nodding to the picture of Baekhyun’s face in next week’s news headlines, flashing across the hologram screen, “Prisons weren’t made for guys like him.”

Chanyeol frowns at the picture of Baekhyun that they’ve chosen. It’s dull and grainy, and makes him look very inaccurately sullen. Nothing about the picture captures the orange glow of his eyes, or the way the light latches onto his cheekbones and animates life into his whole being. “What do you mean?”

“Baekhyun’s already been in jail four times. Know how he got out, all four times?” says Jongdae. He snaps his fingers. “Escaped.”

 

 

Maybe Baekhyun escapes a fifth time. Or so Chanyeol likes to imagine.

In this life, Chanyeol dies four months after their encounter, on his regular trip home to Earth. The ship collides with an asteroid, tears the vehicle open, killing its passengers on impact.

Chanyeol closes his eyes, that split second before the ship’s debris hits him square in the head. He closes his eyes and somehow, thinks about those two bullet trains – the past and future converging, time stopping.

Baekhyun may have gotten out. He may have.

Or –

Well, Chanyeol doesn’t have to think about that.

 

 

1941

The rain has slipped into Chanyeol’s boots, soaking him right down to his toes. Beside him, he can hear all the soldiers’ complaining about the wet cloth chafing their skin, but Chanyeol keeps his own woes to himself. He marches along, in line and in time, and keeps his eyes forward so he doesn’t have to meet anyone’s gaze.

It’s been an hour since the army had marched in and claimed occupation of the village, but more than fear, Chanyeol sees an exasperation in the villagers. A sad exasperation, empty and dull and void of hope.

He keeps his eyes forward and marches along.

The soldiers are brought to the village inn where the innkeeper bows deeply to them and hands them each room keys. Chanyeol accepts his keys with a tiny nod. The innkeeper’s jaw is clenched tight, Chanyeol can tell from up close, but otherwise the man does a good job of hiding his displeasure.

In the dining hall, Kim Minseok slides in beside Chanyeol at the tables. They’ve both shed their armour in their rooms, but their swords are still strapped to the waist of their pants, as per the general’s orders.

“You’re frowning,” Minseok points out. A young woman pours ale into his cup, curtseying before stepping away.

Chanyeol exhales, tension seeping out of his shoulders. “Am I?”

“If it’s any consolation, there are very few of us that actually want to be here,” replies Minseok. He sniffs the ale curiously, before taking an experimental sip. “You’re not alone on that, Mr. Soft-hearted. Although you _are_ terrible at hiding it.”

Chanyeol licks his lips. His own drink is untouched. “Have you looked into the eyes of these people?” murmurs Chanyeol, just low enough so only Minseok can hear. “It’s just… their eyes are so hollow. Like we’ve sucked the life out of them.”

Minseok pauses, contemplatively. “Well,” he sighs, placing his elbows forward on the table, so that his back muscles jut out from underneath his shirt, “This village is still technically a part of the kingdom. The general sees its occupation as a ‘necessary evil’.” He downs his ale in one chug and lets out a satisfied noise. Then he rolls his eyes, “You know how he likes those words.” 

Chanyeol, whose stomach is churning, passes Minseok his own drink that he’s definitely in no mood for. Minseok takes it and lifts it in thanks.

“Not a single villager has resisted,” says Chanyeol, looking over his shoulder at a sudden burst of laughter that comes from somewhere behind him. One of the soldiers has pulled a young villager girl into his lap. 

“How can they?” Minseok argues. “They knew it was only a matter of time.”

The laughter quiets after a moment, and a chorus of whistles and groans breaks out. Chanyeol glances back once more to find the young girl has been pulled away from the soldier’s table, off of the man’s lap, and being hauled towards the kitchen by another villager, a boy. Her cheeks are flushed red but she looks otherwise unharmed – and even more relieved.

The boy who’s gripping her wrist stops them at the kitchen door. He turns to speak to her, and Chanyeol sees the boy’s face in profile.

“Baekhyun.”

Minseok wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “What’d you say?”

Baekhyun is speaking rapidly, heatedly, waving his arms around and making no effort to hide it. A woman emerges from the kitchen – the innkeeper’s wife – and suddenly, Chanyeol sees the resemblance between them all. The young girl – Baekhyun’s sister – pushes past her mother and disappears through the door, her head hung low. The mother says nothing, only shoots Baekhyun a pointed look, a warning look, and then follows behind her daughter.

Chanyeol is gripping the edge of his table with tight fists, gaze fixed on Baekhyun’s lone figure, his mouth forming a curse word as he pulls a rag out from the back of his pants and starts wiping down a spill on the table adjacent Chanyeol’s.

Minseok has started telling a story. His ale has been refilled and now he is well on his way to drunk. He is recounting a tale about how his life had been saved by a forest spirit on their trek from the royal court to the first village. Chanyeol is listening with only half an ear. His vision has shrunken again, into a single point, fixated on the boy beside him.

Baekhyun’s hair is not a fiery magenta this time; it is a dark, dark brown, almost black in the candlelight. His eyes, no longer a fake orange, are again hazel, framed by his thin, dark eyelashes that graze his skin every time he blinks.

And suddenly, Chanyeol sees – for the first time since he’s arrived here – a resistance, in the hazel glow of Baekhyun’s irises, like an animal swimming against a river current.

A _whack_ pulls Chanyeol back into focus. Baekhyun is standing upright with his hands crossed against his chest, cleaning rag thrown onto the table. He’s staring back now.

“Quit staring, buddy,” Baekhyun says, in a flat, dangerous tone.

Minseok chokes on his drink, swaying a little in his seat as he turns to face Baekhyun. “Are you talking to us, little guy?” he demands, not angrily, but with a drunken loudness. “Watch yer tone, there.”

The innkeeper’s wife appears at Baekhyun’s side, eyes wide and frantic. “Please excuse my son, sirs. He’s had a terribly long day and has not slept in a while. I’m afraid he’s not watching his tongue,” he flicks Baekhyun in the back of the neck and he yelps. “Bow and express your apology, Baekhyun.”

Baekhyun’s jaw locks, chin dipping in the smallest fraction of a degree. “My _deepest_ apologies,” he drawls, a second later, adding, “Sirs.”

He grabs his cleaning rag with a swipe of his hand and stalks off. His mother looks appalled, frightened to her toes as she meets Chanyeol’s eyes again. “I humbly request you excuse him, he has been so unwell as of late—“

Chanyeol waves his hand dismissively. “It’s fine, Miss,” he tells her. He clears his throat. “He’s your son, you say?”

She nods nervously. “He is, indeed. A bit hot-headed but I assure you, he is really very gentle… at-at times.”

Minseok whistles, sipping from his fifth (sixth?) round of ale. “Gotta keep an eye on that one. Put a muzzle on ‘im.”

 

 

Three weeks pass. Half of the men are sent forth to the next village, while Chanyeol, Minseok and the remaining half stay to keep the village occupied. The weeks that follow are a bustle of paperwork. Chanyeol goes from shop to shop, home to home, as each man, woman and child is accounted for.

Minseok, who’d been assigned to the fish market, catches a terrible flu and spends several days at the local doctor’s. One morning, Chanyeol takes over for him. On the docks, he watches fishermen haul in their catch. Baekhyun pulls up in one of the boats.

“You again,” he says blandly, as Chanyeol walks up to him on the dock.

“I’m Chanyeol.”

“Care to ditch the sword, Chanyeol?” Baekhyun nods at the blade swinging imposingly at Chanyeol’s hip.

Chanyeol looks down, forgetting it was even there. “This is—“ he stammers.

“Yeah, yeah. Gotta keep it on yourself or else the big man will be unhappy, right?”

Chanyeol watches him tie the boat in place. There are buckets of identical looking fish piled up on the deck of the boat. Baekhyun lifts them out with a little huff.

“You know, we’re not here to kill anyone,” Chanyeol tells him.

Baekhyun hands the bucket off to another man and goes to pull out the next one. The sun is hanging unusually high for so early in the morning. His shirt is a thin, airy material that is damp at the edges and hugs his slim frame. A breeze ruffles his hair, dark strands sticking up in all directions. When he looks back up at Chanyeol, there is a serene smile splitting his face.

“Sounds like bullshit,” Baekhyun says sweetly, dropping another bucket onto the dock with a loud thud. “No offense, of course. I know you’re just a military pawn.” He looks up at the sky, squinting his eyes, lifting a hand over his forehead to shade himself from the light. “Hm. Feels like noon, for some reason.”

“It’s still morning,” says Chanyeol.

Baekhyun nods. “Oh, I know,” he replies, wiping his hands on his pants. “I know these skies better than you do.” His hair is still sticking up, like he’d just rolled out of bed, and Chanyeol feels terribly like smoothing it down with his hand. “So, were you born and raised in the royal court or what?”

Chanyeol clears his throat. “No, I spent most of my life in a village just like this one,” he says. “On the other side of the royal capital. But a village just the same.”

Baekhyun looks over at him sharply. He’s started unwinding a fishing net from his boat, and he pauses for a moment. Chanyeol shrugs. “I was sent to serve the King when I was fourteen. It’s only been seven years.”

“Seven, huh?” Baekhyun resumes his handiwork. “We’re the same age. More or less. Although your face seems a little too boy-ish to be menacing, if you ask me.” He pulls a knife out of his back pocket and flicks it open, slicing through knots in his net. “Not like your friend with the pointed eyes. He was a scary looking fellow. You, not so much.”

Chanyeol rubs the back of his neck, sheepishly. The heat flushing on his cheeks is from the sun, he tells himself. Baekhyun accidentally nicks his palm with his knife, letting out a curse under his breath. 

“Do you need help with that?” asks Chanyeol.

Baekhyun throws him a look. “Never seen blood before, soldier?”

“I see it often. It doesn’t mean it gets any less unsettling.”

Baekhyun tosses his net onto the boat deck, folding his knife again into his pocket. Chanyeol notices he’s barefoot. He pads along to the edge of the dock and crouches down, looking at Chanyeol over his shoulder. “Come sit. Water feels good on your toes. Especially on warm mornings,” he says. Reluctantly, Chanyeol sits beside him, pulling his sword off his belt, letting it clatter on the wood.

“How about dying?” asks Baekhyun, after a long moment.

Chanyeol glances at him, blinking. “What?”

“Does dying get any less unsettling?” Baekhyun dips a toe in and Chanyeol watches a ripple form on the surface of the water. “Are soldiers afraid to die? I’ve always wondered.”

Baekhyun leans back onto the palms of his hands, tilting his head up until the sunlight catches the pale skin of his neck. Chanyeol feels a shiver course through his body, despite the heat. It never gets easier, Chanyeol thinks. Nothing about Baekhyun ever gets easier. Chanyeol has died more deaths than he can count on all his fingers and toes. And yet, here he is – heart pounding, air roaring in his ears.

Chanyeol’s never been afraid to die.

He’s afraid of watching lifetimes slip through and away from his grasp.

“It’s strange how prepared you can feel for death, but when the time really comes, it doesn’t hurt any less,” Chanyeol murmurs, watching the sun sparkle on the water. “It doesn’t get any easier to face. No matter how many times you might have to face it.”

Baekhyun hums, folding his hands in his lap. He looks over at Chanyeol. “My name is Baekhyun, by the way.”

Chanyeol swallows the lump in his throat. “Nice to meet you, Baekhyun,” he says, almost a whisper, barely audible over the rippling water.

“You sound like you’ve been very close to death,” Baekhyun comments absently. He smiles a little, no more menace in his eyes. “You must believe in an afterlife.”

Chanyeol shakes his head. “No afterlife,” he says. “I think the soul continues to exist, but everything else melts away. Nothing lives _on._ It just… well, exists.”

Baekhyun runs his tongue across his chapped lips. “You’re very morbid, Chanyeol.”

“Only when someone chooses such a morbid topic.”

“Well,” Baekhyun squints up at the sun again with a sigh, “I think this morning is much too beautiful to be discussing such things.” He fidgets with the ends of his damp shirt, twirling a thin finger around the cloth. He grins at Chanyeol, one of his bright, all-teeth sort of smiles. “Let’s discuss why you were staring at me in the dining hall that first night.”

Chanyeol sputters. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, but I am,” Baekhyun laughs.

The damp wood of the dock is seeping through Chanyeol’s pants, but he pays it no mind. Baekhyun’s laughter rings loudly alongside the birds and the lazy slosh of the lake water.

“I knew someone once. Someone I loved,” says Chanyeol. “A person I met many, many years ago. And you simply remind me of him.”

Baekhyun exhales a little, through his nose, a tiny sigh deflating his shoulders. “In what ways?” he asks, fixing his eyes on Chanyeol, as if searching for the answer in his pupils.

A soft smile pulls Chanyeol’s lips up, a dull ache pulsing in his chest. It still haunts his dreams – that insane melody Baekhyun played that very first day in the jazz club. The melody itself has long disintegrated into something hazy and unsalvageable, like all old memories, but the thrum of the tune through Chanyeol’s body always remains. “Do you play piano?”

Baekhyun raises his eyebrows. “Yes. I do.”

Chanyeol’s smile widens, lungs rushing in with air. “Jazz?”

“Not exclusively, but yes. Why do you ask?”

Chanyeol shrugs, but doesn’t trust himself to speak. This life, all of a sudden, feels like the life he’s been waiting for all this time. An existence in which Chanyeol might actually be able to love him, fully and certainly. An existence where Baekhyun could love him back.

“You know, death isn’t all bad,” Chanyeol says softly, almost afraid to ruin the silence. It sits poised and delicate between them. “It liberates, in a way. You feel like you can say everything you’ve ever wanted, right at the moment of death. Let go all your burdens, once and for all. Death makes you brave.”

At this, Baekhyun scoffs, shaking his head decisively. “That’s not bravery. It’s cowardice,” he replies, and if he notices Chanyeol’s stunned expression, Baekhyun ignores it and goes on. “Say what you need to say while it still matters. Don’t run away from it and use death as an excuse.”

A voice breaks their tranquil silence, before Chanyeol can come to his senses.

“Baekhyun! Mom needs you back at the inn!” It’s Baekhyun sister, calling from the edge of the dock. Baekhyun throws her a thumbs up and stands with a huff, wincing from the open wound on his palm.

“See you ‘round, Chanyeol,” says Baekhyun, then he’s jogging down the dock to catch up with his sister.

Chanyeol watches Baekhyun’s figure grow smaller and smaller – like two layers of a single image, of past and present. Sand through fingertips, slipping away.

_While it still matters._

And so Chanyeol, in that single instant, watching Baekhyun throw a final little grin at him, decides it matters right now. It matters in this very moment. Before the sun goes down. Before a new day comes and wipes the moment away – it matters right now.

I love you.

Say what you need to say while it still matters.

 

 

In the hour that follows, many things happen.

Chanyeol returns from the docks and is commanded to wear his armour again. All the soldiers resting at the inn are instructed tersely to evacuate. Even Minseok is pulled from his sick bed, thrown into his combat wear, and marches to the other side of the village along with everyone else.

No one knows what is happening, and those who do, say nothing.

But in this same hour, they return to the inn once more to see it swallowed by flames. Pillars of fire lashing out, as if summoned from the very depths of hell itself. Chanyeol turns numb, limbs limp, the blood inside him boiling, threatening to melt him from the inside out.

A scream rips out from within; a desperate, angry wail that pierces through the fire and smoke. Minseok turns around and throws up. Their general stands before them, arms behind his back, watching on impassively.

“Don’t be alarmed, men,” the general announces flatly, as if simply scouting the skies to check the weather. “Most of them passed out from the smoke fumes first. It’s painless, really.”

They are forced to watch it all. Chanyeol doesn’t remember at which point his conscious-self flees his body, but eventually, he stares on – detached from reality, unhinged like a broken door.

“A necessary evil,” the general says, when the fire has burned out and ashes float like grey snowflakes in the air. “Many villagers were meeting in the basement of this inn to plan a retaliation against His Majesty’s military presence.” He clasps his hands together. “Examples must be made.”

The village is silent, all the way until sundown. Then, whatever happens after the end of that day, Chanyeol wouldn’t know. Because within that same hour, his mind – as blank as a grey sky – carries his feet to the edge of this wretched village. And the smoke in his lungs threatens to swallow him whole as he mounts the first horse in the stables, and flees far, far away from this lifetime.

 

 

2016

“She unfollowed me on Instagram.”

Sehun frantically drops his phone atop Chanyeol’s study notes, screen lighted up to a long list of names Chanyeol does not know, nor cares to.

“Look!” Sehun emphasises his dilemma with a pointed raise of his eyebrows and then stretches his legs out on the steps in front of him. He’s wearing shorts today, the sun overhead showing off his blindingly pale skin, and if Chanyeol wasn’t already cranky from his all-nighter earlier in the day, he might take the time to humour Sehun.

Except Chanyeol _is_ cranky and Sehun – the freshman who’s started following him around like a puppy since the semester started – is the last person Chanyeol wants to entertain at the moment.

“What exactly am I looking at?” Chanyeol asks dryly, shoving the phone off his books. He’s got a sociology exam tomorrow morning that he is confident he is going to flunk.

“My follower list,” Sehun declares, “which, as you can see, lacks a certain Krystal Jung.”

Chanyeol hums absently. “That’s tragic.”

“What if she _hates_ me?” Sehun exclaims.

“She does hate you.”

“What?”

“What?”

Sehun narrows his eyes. Chanyeol ignores him, returning to his notes with an open highlighter. The campus is bustling today, extra busy because of the early spring warmth. The two of them have claimed a shady spot on the steps of the library entrance. There is just enough breeze to keep the air pleasant, but not enough to send their study notes flying off.

After a few minutes, Sehun closes a calculus textbook he hadn’t been reading and throws it in his bag. “I’m heading for lunch now,” he announces.

“It’s 10:40am, Sehun.”

“Right, well, you do you,” Sehun shrugs and sets off down the steps. He pats Chanyeol’s head and smiles sweetly, “Hope you fail your exam.”

“Hope you fail yours too,” Chanyeol replies, with equal fondness.

Sehun skips off across the campus, and another half hour passes in blissful peace. An early spring always feels like a gift, in Chanyeol’s eyes; the cold leaving sooner than you’d imagined, green grass poking out beneath melting snow. The air feels extra fresh and clear today. He tilts his head up to rub an ache out of his neck, and the sky seems impossibly blue, the clouds impossibly large – so cotton-y he can almost feel its texture on his fingertips.

He blinks, blocking out the sun with one hand. The other hand reaches up towards the sky and traces a cloud, delicately. The wind grazes his skin, a light rush of air neither warm nor cold.

And then he sees him. At the bottom of the steps, light brown hair and a messenger bag on one shoulder, fingers curled around a textbook or two. Chanyeol shoots to his feet, papers flying off his lap. He fumbles for his glasses, frantically, because for something like this, he can barely trust his eyes. And even then – the image of _him,_ it peels Chanyeol away from reality, away from this lifetime. With that light blue button down, messenger bag, perpetual little glint behind hazel eyes, it could almost be the same as the first time. It could be 1962 – Baekhyun, from the jazz club, the pianist, the very same one – as if the lives, the tribulations, the centuries that had passed between them prior, have melted away into nothing; melted into this moment.

Chanyeol gathers up his books and shoves them into his bag. Baekhyun has taken a seat just below him on the steps, sliding out his laptop, and Chanyeol rushes towards him faster than a bullet train, with no plan at all.

“Hi, I’m Chanyeol,” he says in one, panicked breath. He’s panting, he realizes, but if Baekhyun finds it strange, he hides it well.

A smile splits his face – amusement. Mischief. The perfect combination of both, that stirs something deep inside Chanyeol’s stomach. “Hello, Chanyeol,” Baekhyun replies slowly. “Nice to meet you.”

“Yes,” Chanyeol exhales, blinking rapidly, as if he doesn’t blink fast enough, Baekhyun might evaporate like a rain puddle, “it’s… very nice to meet you.” There’s a stretch of silence in which Baekhyun expects Chanyeol to continue, but Chanyeol’s head is in a thousand places at once – in the jazz club, at Kim Joonmyeon’s mansion, the palace courtyard, the space ship, the inn—

The realities converge, pile over each other, like water ripples bumping on the surface of a lake.

“What’s your, um,” Chanyeol coughs, “What’s your major?”

“Music,” Baekhyun replies. “Well, piano, to be specific.” He taps the book that had been in his hand, and Chanyeol sees it’s a thick collection of classical pieces. “And you?”

“Engineering,” says Chanyeol.

Baekhyun lifts an eyebrow, nodding at the book on Chanyeol’s lap. “Engineer who’s taking a socio class?”

Chanyeol chuckles. “Elective.”

“Fascinating,” Baekhyun comments, staring straight at Chanyeol with his bright, curious gaze, “What an incredibly well-rounded individual you’ll be.” He reaches over to his messenger bag and pulls out a pair of earphones. He plugs it into the sound jack of his laptop, then hands Chanyeol an earplug. “I’m composing something for one of my projects. Want to listen?”

Chanyeol nods and takes the earplug. Baekhyun moves closer to him, only a slit of air separating their legs. He presses play on his laptop, and in that millisecond of silence before the song begins, something in Chanyeol already knows—

It’s that song. The same rapturous melody that had engulfed Chanyeol, from the very time he’d met him. Baekhyun is sneaking quick glances to gauge Chanyeol’s reaction, and Chanyeol catches his gaze and holds it, finding his own reflection beneath Baekhyun’s eyes.

“It’s amazing,” Chanyeol tells him, when the song finishes.

Baekhyun laughs. “Glad you’re so kind,” he replies, “But I’m sure I’m not as amazing as someone who comes up to a random stranger on the library steps and introduces himself out of the blue.” He grins at Chanyeol’s sheepish expression. “That takes courage.”

“Trust me,” murmurs Chanyeol, “I’m not really the sort who does that.”

Baekhyun stuffs his earphones back in his bag, tilting his head to the side, curiously. “Is that so?” he hums. “Well, you could have had me fooled.”

He steals a glance at the time on his laptop, and jumps a bit in his place. “Crap, I have class,” he says, and Chanyeol’s gut drops. “I really can’t miss this lecture. It was very nice speaking to you, Chanyeol!”

“Wait, um—do you have a phone?” Chanyeol stands up as Baekhyun slings his bag over his shoulder again.

Baekhyun grimaces. “I really hope you believe me, but… I sent my phone for repairs yesterday and I’m phone-less for the rest of the week,” he chews his lip.

“Oh...”

“Hey,” Baekhyun shrugs, as he starts to walk down the steps, “I’m sure we’ll see each other around! I hang out here a lot.” Then he’s waving goodbye, turning around, about to disappear.

With his back turned, walking away briskly, Chanyeol suddenly sees another Baekhyun – on the docks, jogging towards the inn. Chanyeol had been so certain then, and many times before that, that the goodbyes were temporary and that another day would come – another chance.

It seemed so easy to let this moment pass him in the exact same way.

Expect if there is anything that Chanyeol has come to learn, it is that the present is so fleeting that it becomes the past before you even realize it happened. And when moments pass, you don’t get them back.

“Baekhyun!”

Just before he’s about to turn the corner, around the library, Baekhyun freezes at the sound of his name, peering over his shoulder to find that Chanyeol has caught up with him.

Baekhyun stares at him, in stunned silence. “How did you—“ his throat catches, and Chanyeol bites his lip.

“What’s the matter?” asks Chanyeol.

“My name,” Baekhyun says. “I never told you my name.”

Chanyeol inhales deeply, feels the slow rush of the clear spring air filling up his lungs, and then escaping. He rubs the back of his neck, flushed and heated, and suddenly – Baekhyun is laughing. His bright laugh. Chanyeol’s favourite laugh of his; the one that rings clearer and fresher than any spring wind, the kind that speaks of friendship and fondness without a single word.

“Well…” Chanyeol says, at a loss. “I—“

Baekhyun gives Chanyeol a playful smile, but there’s something mystical and fascinated in there too. “I’m going to let it slide,” he says mischievously, “but you have to promise to tell me one of these days.”

Chanyeol grins. “Deal,” he tells Baekhyun, feeling gloriously warm. “Although, you’d never believe me.”

That pulls a smirk out of Baekhyun, as Chanyeol had guessed it would. “Try me,” Baekhyun replies.

Chanyeol clears his throat, fists clenching and unclenching. The wind passes by to whisper a distant secret in his ear.

_I love you –_

_While it still matters –_

“Do you mind if I walk you to class?” Chanyeol asks. And as Baekhyun’s smile widens, Chanyeol – in the long years to follow – likes to imagine that this is where they really, truly began; that every lifetime that came before all culminated, like the apex of a tall mountain, into Baekhyun’s four words:

“I would love that.”

 

 

Epilogue

Two Years Later

They wake up early on Sunday, while the sky is still orange. Baekhyun opens his eyes to find Chanyeol watching him, a path of muted sunlight sitting between them, lighting up the warm creases of the bedsheets. Baekhyun groans tiredly as Chanyeol snakes his arm around him, pulling Baekhyun’s torso towards him.

“Stop staring at me, it’s fucking creepy,” Baekhyun mumbles, but he turns on his side to curl into Chanyeol’s chest, anyways.

“You’re adorable in the morning,” Chanyeol whispers into Baekhyun’s hair.

“I hate you,” replies Baekhyun, in a quieter whisper, trailing his arms up Chanyeol’s bare back, over the jut of his shoulder blades, where his fingers dance on his skin, like piano keys.

“I love you,” Chanyeol says. And even though Baekhyun just hums, half-asleep and clinging to his consciousness by a thread, he still clutches Chanyeol tighter. And it’s enough.

Enough for Chanyeol’s heart to burst with warmth, to trail his lips down Baekhyun’s nose, behind his ear, to rest at his lips; enough for Chanyeol to kiss him softly, murmuring –

“Hey. You should marry me.”

Because it would be a privilege to be loved by you.


End file.
